“I’m saying the humans feel compassion primarily for those they conceive of as being part of themselves. You don’t know these people, so you can use them as bait for the Keeper of Earth. If it was just one person being tortured, however, you wouldn’t do it—because then you would empathize with her and couldn’t live with yourself for letting her suffer.”
Shedemei was so agitated she left the library and went to tend her seedlings in the high-altitude room, where she was trying to breed a legume that would produce useful quantities of high-protein, high-energy beans in the highest mountain valleys of the gornaya. It was unspeakable, what the Oversoul had said, but it also made a kind of sense. As primates evolved toward depending on a community for cooperative survival, they would evolve empathy first for their own children, then for the children of others, then for the adult parents of those other children—but as the circle grew wider, the empathy would grow weaker.
Finally, humans had to evolve what no other primate had: a sense of identity with a group so powerful that it could swallow up the individual identity, at least to a large degree. Humans couldn’t have this deep, self-sacrificing loyalty to more than one or two communities at a time. Thus communities were inevitably in conflict with each other, competing for the loyalty of their members. The tribe had to break down the solidarity of the family; religion had to compete with nation for loyalty. But once a community had that loyalty, the most ardent members would gladly die for it. Not for the other individuals directly, but for the interests of the group as a whole, because in the human mind, that group was the self, and the individual was able to regard himself as merely one iteration of the pattern of the whole. Humans, in order to rise above animals, had learned how to convert themselves into nothing more than organs or limbs or even the disposable fingernails and hair of a larger metaphorical organism.
The Oversoul is right. If I knew Chebeya and her people as individuals, then even with no more moral insight than a baboon, I would reach out to protect them. Or if I conceived myself to be one of them, I would subsume my own interests in the needs of the group as a whole, and would not dream of making them serve as bait in an attempt to serve the Keeper of Earth.
The Oversoul, on the other hand, was created to look out for the needs of humanity as a whole. The powers she had were tremendous, and her programmers had to build some kind of compassion into her. But it was an intellectual compassion, a historical compassion—the more people who were suffering, the greater the priority of easing their pain. Thus the Oversoul could overlook individual accidents, the intermittent deaths from the ordinary course of a disease cycling through a region; but the Oversoul would dread and try to avoid the large group suffering that came from war, drought, flood, epidemic. In those cases, the Oversoul could act, guiding individuals to actions that would help the whole affected population—not to save individual lives, but to reduce the scale of the suffering.
Between the two of us, though, thought Shedemei, we are left untouched by the suffering of Chebeya’s people. There aren’t enough of them to force the Oversoul to intervene on their behalf—though there are enough to make her uncomfortable. And I, on my isolated perch in the outer reaches of the atmosphere, I am no part of them. All my people are gone; my community is dead. As the digger women speak of me: I am the One-Who-Was-Never-Buried. That is the only difference between me and the dead, for a person who has no living community is dead. Haven’t I seen it in old people? Spouse gone, friends gone, family gone except for later generations that barely remember the old one—they become annoyed to discover that they’re still alive. Have I reached that point?
Not yet, she thought, sliding her fingers behind the tiny trowel in order to lift out a seedling that needed transplanting into a larger tray. Because my plants have become my people. My little animals, going through generation after generation as I play genetic games with them—they are the ones I think of as part of myself.
So is this good or bad? The Oversoul needs to get advice from the Keeper of Earth in order to alleviate the suffering of the people of Harmony. To accomplish that, we need to interfere with the Keeper’s plans. The Keeper wants to rescue Chebeya and Akmaro; therefore we’ll make it harder. It’s not an unreasonable plan. In the end, it will be to the benefit of millions and millions of people on Harmony.
But we’re doing it blindly. We don’t know what the Keeper is trying to accomplish. Why is she trying to save the Akmari? Maybe we should have tried to understand her purpose before we started fiddling around with her ability to accomplish it.
Yet how can we understand her purpose if she won’t talk to us? It’s so circular.
“Don’t talk into my mind,” she said to the Oversoul. “I hate that.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I was thinking to myself.”
Shedemei snorted. “Very funny.”
“While we’re at it, why not also think about what or who in the world the Keeper of Earth is.”
“If we can’t find the Keeper using physical evidence or recorded memory,” said Shedemei, “then maybe we should study what she wants and what she does, and then search for some mechanism by which it is possible for her to do it, or some entity that might benefit from her doing it.”
“Not at all. Any more than I will ever benefit from the expanded habitat that these little legumes will provide, if they are ever successful at producing useful nutrition in the low-oxygen, short-growing-season, thin-soil environment I intend them for. But someone will benefit. Therefore if some stranger who had no way of discovering me directly wanted to know something about me, she could at least start her reasoning from the fact that I have particular care for enhancing the ability of humans, diggers, and angels to expand into new habitats with improved nutrition. They might then look for me to be of a body-type that allowed me to identify with these creatures. Or at least they could gather from my actions that it is important to me that these creatures be protected.”
“I have no idea,” Shedemei said wearily. “But I also know that if somebody wanted to get my attention, all they’d need to do is start stomping out all my gardens on Earth. Then I’d notice them, all right.”
“Not so destructive, I hope.”
“If you keep goading me this way, you’ll end up persuading me to care so much about them that I stop worrying about the people of Harmony altogether. Is that what you want?”
“Basilica was ruined half a millennium ago. My people are all dead. My nation of birth is irretrievable. Everything I ever felt myself to be a part of is dead, except my gardens. Do you really want me to become part of Akmaro and Chebeya, to begin to feel about them the way I once felt about Rasa and her household, about my friends, about my husband and my children?”
“Then leave me alone.”
“Health! What does this have to do with health?”
Shedemei shuddered. She didn’t want the Oversoul meddling like this. She was just fine on her own. Zdorab was gone, her children were gone, and that was fine, she
had work to do, she didn’t need distractions. Her health indeed!
Akma sat on the brow of the hill, exhausted from the day’s work, but so filled with fury that even lying down wouldn’t have been rest. And lying down he couldn’t have watched his father stand there teaching the people—with Pabulog’s vile sons sitting in the front row of the listeners. After all they had done to him, Father could bring them in and seat them in the place of honor? Of course Father and Mother made a great show of wanting him to sit there in the center of the front row, where he had always sat till now. But to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the lying Didul, the arrogant Pabul, the brutal Udad, the pathetic slimy sneaky little Muwu—Father had to know that it was more shame than Akma could bear.
So he sat here on the hilltop, looking now at the campfires of the digger guards, now down at the gathering of Akma’s people. I can’t sort friends from enemies anymore. The diggers hurt nothing but my body; the Pabulogi stabbed at my pride; and my own father has told me that I’m nothing to him, nothing compared to the sons of his enemy.
Your enemies were my enemies, Father. For your sake, for loyalty to you, I bore whatever came to me and bore it proudly, because it was for you. And then you take my tormentors and talk to them as if they were also your sons. You even call them, call them sons. You dared to call that hypocritical encrustation of a skunk’s rectum “Diduldis”—beloved son! Whose son? Only the son of the man who tried to kill you, Father, who drove you out! Only the son of the man that for your sake I hated. And now you have given him a name that you should never have spoken to anyone but me. I am Akmadis—but not if he has the name Diduldis from your lips. If he is your son then I am not.
Again, as so many times before, Akma felt tears come to his eyes. But he fought them off—and he was getting better at that, hiding his true feelings. Though of course sitting up here as the lone recusant certainly made it plain that he wasn’t happy about something.
Mother was coming up the hill. Hadn’t she given up yet?
Oh, yes, she had. Luet was with her, and now Mother stopped and Luet came on ahead. Ah, of course. Father can’t do anything with nasty little Akma, and Mother can’t make any headway with him, either. So send little Luet and see what she can do.
“Kmada!” she cried, when she was near enough.
“Why don’t you go back down and listen to Father?” said Akma coldly. But the hesitation in her eyes forced him to relent. What did she know of these matters? She was innocent, and he wasn’t going to be unjust to her. “Come here, Lutya, Ludayet.”
“Oooh, Kmada, that name is so ugly.”
“I think Ludayet is cute.”
“But Lutya is the name of the Hero.”
“The Hero’s wife,” said Akma.
“Father says the ancient women were heroes as much as the men.”
“Yes, well, that’s Father’s opinion. Father thinks diggers are people.”
“They are, you know. Because they have language. And there are good diggers and bad diggers.”
“Yes, I now,” said Akma. “Because most diggers are dead—those are the good ones.”
“Are you mad at me like you’re mad at Father?” asked Luet.
“I’m never mad at you.”
“Then why do you make me sit with that nasty pig boy?”
Akma laughed at her characterization of Muwu. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“It’s your idea to come up here and leave me alone.”
“Luet, I love you. But I won’t sit with the sons of Pabulog. Including Muwu.”
Luet nodded gravely. “All right. That’s what Father said—he said you weren’t ready.”
“Ready! I’ll never be ready.”
“So Mother said I can come up here and take my lessons from you.”
Inadvertently, taken by surprise, Akma looked down at his mother, who stood at the base of the hill, watching them. She must have sensed or at least guessed what turn the conversation had taken, for she nodded her head just once and then turned away, walking back to the group that still listened to Akmaro teaching.
“I’m not a teacher,” said Akma.
“You know more than me,” said Luet.
Akma knew what Mother was doing—and it had to be with Father’s consent, so really it was Father doing it, too. If Akma won’t stay involved listening to the great teacher Akmaro—or should it be what Pabulog called him, Akmadi, the traitor?—then we’ll keep him involved by having him teach Luet. He won’t dare be unkind to her, nor will he be dishonest enough to teach her falsehood or vent his anger against his father.
It would serve them right if I taught Luet exactly how Father betrayed me. How he has been betraying us all along. Father decides to believe that crazy old man Binadi and ends up getting us all thrown out of the city, forced to live in the wilderness. And then, even as we’re being whipped by digger slavedrivers and tormented by Pabulog’s evil sons, Father teaches us that Binadi said that the Keeper wants us to think of diggers and angels as our brothers, to think of women as our equals, when anyone can see that women are smaller and weaker than men, and that diggers and angels aren’t even the same species. We might as well say we’re brothers of trees and uncles of termites. We might as well call snails our fathers and dungbeetles our sons.
But he said none of this to Luet. Instead he got a stick, pulled out enough tufts of grass to have a clear writing surface of dirt, and began writing words and quizzing her on them. He could teach his sister. It would be better than sitting here alone, being burned alive inside by rage. And he would not use Luet as a weapon to strike out at Father. That was another matter, to be settled at another time. A time when Didul wasn’t sitting there smirking at every word that Akma uttered. A time when he didn’t have to smell the musk that Pabul gave off like a randy buck. A time when he and Father could look each other in the face and speak the truth.
I won’t rest until Father admits how disloyal he’s been. Admits that he loves them more than me, and that it’s wrong for him to have been so unnatural as to forgive them without asking me first, without asking me to forgive him. How could he have acted as if forgiving them were the most natural thing in the world! And what right did he have to forgive them, when Akma still had not? It was Akma who had borne the worst of it. Everyone knew that. And in front of everyone, Father forgave them and took them through the water to make new men of them. Of course he made them say those stupid empty words of apology. We’re so sorry, Akma. We’re sorry, Luet. We’re sorry, everybody. We are no longer the evil men who did that. We’re now new men and true believers.
Am I the only one who isn’t fooled? Am I the only one who sees that they still plan to betray us? That someday soon their fathers will come and they’ll turn on us and we’ll pay for having trusted them?
I’ll pay.
Akma shuddered, imagining what the sons of Pabulog would do to him, when they had once again revealed their true nature of pure evil. Father would be sorry then, but it would be Akma that would be punished for Father’s foolishness.
“Are you cold?’ asked Luet.
“Only a little,” said Akma.
“It’s very warm tonight,” said Luet. “You shouldn’t be cold unless you’re sick.”
“All right,” said Akma. “I won’t be cold anymore.”
“I can sit close up beside you and help you stay warmer.”
So she sat by him and he kept his arm around her shoulder as they studied the words he wrote in the dirt. She was very quick, this little girl. Smarter than any boy Akma knew. So maybe that part of Father’s teaching was true. Maybe girls were every bit as good as boys, when it came to learning, anyway. But anybody who could teach that a female digger was somehow equal to this sweet, trusting little girl was either insane or dishonest. Which was Father? Did it matter?
They came down the hill in near darkness; the meeting was over. Luet led the way into the hut, chattering to Mother about the things that Akma had taught her.
“Thank you, Akma,” said
Mother.
Akma nodded. “Gladly, Mother,” he said quietly.
But to his father he said nothing, and his father said nothing to him.
FIVE
MYSTERIES
Mon couldn’t help but notice that Bego was distracted. The old scholar hardly heard Mon’s answers to his questions, and when Bego asked him again the very question that he had just answered, Mon couldn’t help but peevishly say, “What is it, teaching the younger son just isn’t interesting anymore?”
Bego looked annoyed. “What do you mean? What’s this petulance? I thought you outgrew that years ago.”
“You just asked me the same question twice, Bego, O wise master. And since you didn’t hear a word of my answer the first time, it can’t be that you were dissatisfied with it and want me to try again.”
“What you need to learn is respect.” Bego launched himself from his stool, apparently forgetting that he was too old and fat to fly very effectively. He ended up skittering across the floor till he got to the window, and there he stood, panting. “Can’t even get up onto the sill anymore,” he said angrily.
“At least you can remember flying.”
“Will you shut up about your stupid envy of sky people? For one day, for one hour, for one minute will you just stop it and give a thought to reality?”
Stung and hurt, Mon wanted to lash back with some sharp retort, some bit of devastating wit that would make Bego regret having spoken so cruelly. But there was no retort, because Bego was right. “Maybe if I could bear my life as it is for one day, for one hour, for one minute, I could forget my wish to be something else,” Mon finally answered.
Bego turned to him, his gaze softening. “What is this? Honesty, from Mon?”
“I never lie.”
“I mean honesty about how you feel.”
“Are you going to pretend that it was my feelings you were worried about?”
Bego laughed. “I don’t worry much about anybody’s, feelings. But yours might matter.” He looked at Mon as if he was listening. For what? Mon’s heartbeat? For his secret thoughts? I have no secret thoughts, thought Mon. Or rather, they’re not secret because I’ve withheld them—if they’re unknown, it’s because no one asked.
Earthborn (Homecoming) Page 13
